Elastic Search Fuzzy Search root and nested fields

Question

I am new to Elastic Search and facing a couple of issues when querying. I have a simple Mongodb database with collections of cities and places of interest. Each collection has a cityName and other details like website etc, and also a places object array. This is my mapping;

{
    "mappings": {
        "properties": {
            "cityName": {
                "type": "text"
            },
            "phone": {
                "type": "keyword"
            },
            "email": {
                "type": "keyword"
            },
            "website": {
                "type": "keyword"
            },
            "notes": {
                "type": "keyword"
            },
            "status": {
                "type": "keyword"
            },
            "places": {
                "type": "nested",
                "properties": {
                    "name": {
                        "type": "text"
                    },
                    "status": {
                        "type": "keyword"
                    },
                    "category": {
                        "type": "keyword"
                    },
                    "reviews": {
                        "properties": {
                            "rating": {
                                "type": "long"
                            },
                            "comment": {
                                "type": "keyword"
                            },
                            "user": {
                                "type": "nested"
                            }
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

I need a fuzzy query where user can search both cityName and places.name, however I get results when I search a single word, adding multiple words return 0 hits. I am sure I am missing something here because I started learning elastic search 2 days ago. The following query returns results because I have a document with cityName: Islamabad and places array having objects that have the keyword Islamabad in their name, in some places the keyword Islamabad is at the beginning of the place.name and in some places objects it might be in the middle or end

This is what I am using : Returns results when only one word

{
  "query": {
    "bool": {
      "should": [
        {
              "fuzzy": {
                "cityName": "Islamabad"
              }

        },
        {
          "nested": {
            "path": "places",
            "query": {
              "fuzzy": {
                "places.name": "Islamabad"
              }
            }
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

Adding another word, say, club, to the above query returns 0 hits when I actually do have places having names Islamabad club and Islamabad Golf club

Problem The search query is sent from an app and so it is dynamic, so the term to search is same for both cityName and places.name AND places.name doesn't always have the cityName in it.

What do I need exactly?? I need a query where I can search cityName and the array of places (only searching places.name). The query should be of Fuzzy type so that it still returns results if the word Islamabad is spelled like Islambad or even return results for Islam or Abad. And the query should also return results for multiple words, I am sure am I doing something wrong there. Any help would be appreciated.

**P.S : ** I am actually using MongoDB as my database but migrating to Elastic Search ONLY for improving our search feature. I tried different ways with MongoDB, used the mongoose-fuzzy-searching npm module but that didn't work, so if there's a simpler solution for MongoDB please share that too.

Thanks.

EDIT 1:

I had to change the structure (mapping) of my data. Now I have 2 separate indices, one for cities with city details and a cityId and another index for all places, each place has a cityId which will be used for joining later if needed. Each place also has a cityName key so I will only be searching the places index because it has all the details (place name and city name).

I have a city including the word Welder's in it's name and also the some places inside the same location have the word Welder's in their name, which have a type:text. However when searched for welder both of the following queries don't return these documents, a search for welders OR welder's does return these documents. I am not sure why welder won't match with Welder's*. I didn't specify any analyzer during the creation of both the indices and neither am I explicitly defining it in the query can anyone help me out with this query so it behaves as expected:

Query 1 :

{
    "query": {
        "bool": {
            "should": [
                {
                    "match": {
                        "name": {
                            "query": "welder",
                            "fuzziness": 20
                        }
                    }
                },
                 {
                    "match": {
                        "cityName": {
                            "query": "welder",
                            "fuzziness": 20
                        }
                    }
                }

            ]
        }
    }
}

Query 2 :

{
    "query": {
        "match": {
            "name": {
                "query": "welder",
                "fuzziness": 20
            }
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

the fuzzy query is meant to be used to find approximations of your complete query within a certain distance :

To find similar terms, the fuzzy query creates a set of all possible variations, or expansions, of the search term within a specified edit distance. The query then returns exact matches for each expansion.

If you you cant to allow fuzzy matching of individual terms in your query your need to use a match query with the fuzziness activated.

POST <your_index>/_search
{
  "query": {
    "bool": {
      "should": [
        {
          "match": {
            "cityName": {
              "query": "Islamabad golf",
              "fuzziness": "AUTO"
            }
          }
        },
        {
          "nested": {
            "path": "places",
            "query": {
              "match": {
                "places.name": {
                  "query": "Islamabad golf",
                  "fuzziness": "AUTO"
                }
              }
            }
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

Reminder: Fuzziness in elasticsearch allow at max 2 corrections per term. SO you will never be able to match Islam with Islamabad since there are 4 changes between those terms.

For more information on distance and fuzziness parameters please refer to this documentation page fuzziness parameters